The invention relates generally to the assembly of components onto a surface, and more particularly, to the assembly of semiconductor cells onto a substrate for solar cell applications.
One of the key problems with high-efficiency, single crystal Silicon solar cells is the overall manufacturing cost of the solar cell. A key component of the manufacturing cost is the cost of the silicon itself. However, for typical wafer-style solar cells, only the top surface of the wafer is needed to generate the maximum possible efficiency. Thus, the majority of the Silicon in a wafer-style solar cell does not contribute to the power output, resulting in high solar cell cost, per unit of power output.
One way to address the problem is to slice the wafer into long, thin strips and place the strips laterally on a substrate. In this way, nearly the entire volume of Silicon is utilized to generate electricity, thereby potentially reducing the materials cost for the solar cell. However, a chief shortcoming of this technique is the overall difficulty of laterally placing the strips on a substrate. Some techniques partially compensate for this problem by using very long strips to minimize the number of placed strips per unit of solar cell. However, the long strips are extremely fragile, resulting in a poor yield.
It would therefore be advantageous to be able to assemble solar cells on a substrate using a low-cost, high yield manufacturing process. It would further be desirable for the low-cost, high yield manufacturing process to accommodate tailoring the geometry of the solar cells to reduce the potential for damage during assembly.